YouTube app for iPhone and iPad updated with controls in lockscreen, Control Center
Roger Fingas
Google has updated the YouTube app for Apple's iPhone and iPad with easier access to playback controls, particularly when casting videos to TVs, Chromecasts, set-tops, and other devices.
While casting, YouTube users can now access controls from the iOS lockscreen, as well as a paired Apple Watch. People were previously able to control iOS playback from an Apple Watch, but not for videos being pushed elsewhere.
The updated app in fact offers playback and volume controls from the lockscreen in general, as well as in Control Center. This is likely for the sake of YouTube Red, Google's subscription service, which lets people play videos in the background and ad-free, among other perks.
Google is rumored to be working on yet another subscription service, YouTube Unplugged, which could offer live TV in "skinny" channel bundles akin to Sling TV or PlayStation Vue. It should be announced later this year.
Last week Google's parent company, Alphabet, announced a 22 percent growth in revenues year-over-year to $26.02 billion, which it credited to Google searches and YouTube, both sources of ad money.
The upgraded YouTube app runs on any device with iOS 8 or later.
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